the humiliation of being

I wake up every morning knowing I am someone else’s property. It is a status I have chosen, though I have no choice each and every day.

I awaken into the humiliation of my life, the awareness I am a thing owned. I feel in my body the verbs of possession — “had“ and “have” and “has.” I am “had” by the woman two rooms down the hall and the cowboy man in a bedroom across the house. They are people who “have” me like they have a Lexus SUV and a Ford truck — my Master sliding into his F-350 like he slides into me and rides me for his pleasure.

This is the humiliation of “being,” which is vastly different from the humiliation of “doing.” The humiliation of being derives from who you are. I am an extreme submissive, a real life slave, a woman who needs to be owned and possessed as a thing, as a toy, as property vying for time with a Ford pickup.

I will be called many things in the course of my day and night. Mistress has taken to calling me “princess,” which she sometimes uses when she finds me too precious, but sometimes just because she thinks of me that way, which I find adorable, the language of girls in love. But she also calls me “slavegirl,” and not as a term of fondness, rather a term of identity. The humiliation is not that she calls me this, but that it is in fact what I am.

The life I awaken into isn’t about name calling. It is about terms of address that are usually in some way true. We are most humiliated by things we know are true.

Master sometimes calls me “cunt” and I really don’t like that, not because I am so humiliated by it in itself but because I answer to it: “Yes, Sir.” I answer because I am his slave. In responding, I connect with this label for me and confirm with him that is part of my identity. I have a vagina, a cunt, but that is also, in this life what I am. Master also often calls me “subgirl” — ”Amanda, where’s our subgirl?” (as if he’s lost his phone or one of his dozen remotes) — which could mean “submissive girl,” but more like “below the status of a girl.” It’s a subtle shaming, certainly, a name that I sometimes imagine as on my name tag at a conference.

These humiliations of being are about my identity, how I have come to see myself, what I answer to. But they are also about how others see me. Master also has taken to calling me “fuck toy,” which is very much how he thinks of me and uses me. In his perception of me, it is true, and it becomes my ever-present humiliation.

The humiliation I awaken into is extended into my preparations for the day. My body belongs to others, and I spend a ridiculous amount of time each day making it soft and lubricated and appealing for them. Some of this is every woman’s normal routine, but my regimen is twice what I ever did before I entered this life. I am self-shamed by this conscious preparing of my body to be used. I now have specific concerns about my body as a slave body — for example, my worry that my labia need to be fuller and my attempts using a cream to make them so. I am mentally conditioned these days to feel my own body as an object, flesh that needs to be pretty and soft and warm and wet for others’ pleasure. This is a kind of self-objectification, treating my own body as a separate object just as others do.

I now wear a collar nearly 24/7. It has become a part of me, to the point where if I don’t have one on I feel incomplete. They now have me in high heels most of the day, the fashionable bondage that goes with every outfit. Of course, I haven’t worn a bra and panties for a couple of years. These are simple things, but also are they way I’ve become conditioned to be. This is now normal for me. I am the subgirl who is collared and heeled and naked and available underneath, at all times. This too has become my being. The fact that’s true is, again, a humiliation.

So humiliation is something I can feel all on my own, within myself. But it is magnified in front of others.

When Mistress Amanda introduced me to her colleagues as her “slave,” there was humiliation in being understood by strangers as such. But, again, the greater humiliation — evidenced in the blushing of my chest and face — came from the fact that it is true. In front of strangers, I was identified as a sex slave and imagined, I’m sure, in various situations of submission to Amanda. The common question from a stranger is, “If your Mistress ordered you to do anything, no matter what, would you obey her?” These colleagues were all thinking that. My humiliation lies in my answer — I know and Amanda knows that, yes, I would do anything for her.

The “doing” of any particular order is the humiliation of doing. Knowing I would do it — and do anything — is the humiliation of being. It is humiliating because it is what I can’t help being, a slave to my mistress.

There is a lot of humiliation in that “can’t help myself” bit. It’s sort of the tipping point of all this. It’s the humiliation of the alcoholic resisting but ultimately reaching for the whiskey bottle. For me, it’s the humiliation of wanting to be a “respectable woman” yet unable to resist the order from Mistress to kneel before her and extend my tongue. Again, it’s not so much what she places or pisses on my tongue that matters. It is that I cannot resist submitting my face and mouth to her pleasure. Normal girls don’t do that.

And that’s another aspect of the humiliation of being. I am not normal. I know that. I don’t apologize for that. Yet, one does sometimes desire normality. One looks at the lives of those she is submissive to, or those women in her mistress’s orbit, and thinks what if. What if I were normal that way, and more regular sexually and emotionally, and had a life of accomplishment and respectability. Of course, I once did have that life. Or really, I pretended to have that life for almost a decade. And that was not me. Because “me” is an extreme submissive. So I am here, waking up into a world where my Mistress calls me “slavegirl” and my Master calls me “fuck toy.” Part of the humiliation of being is the understanding one is not normal.

Some say that in submission and slavery humiliation is actually a good feeling, as it is something a submissive desires and converts into pleasure. I don’t agree, or at least I would argue a different view.

I think humiliation is humiliation, in a vanilla person’s life and in a slave’s life. It is a kind of pain, emotional pangs, anguish. I feel this deeply every day. It’s not a different feeling than others have. It’s not something I enjoy in itself. However, what I do desire (I’m not sure “enjoy” is the right word here) is to be controlled and possessed. That is my core as a submissive. My humiliations are embedded in experiences of others’ control of me, and being controlled is, for me, pleasurable and joyful. Yet the pain of humiliation is very much a part of that and deeply felt.

When Mistress Amanda has me kneel in a slave position before her, I feel her control of me. I feel the humiliation of being a grown adult woman kneeling formally in front of another adult. I am aware I am a piece of property she owns. She sees my humiliation from all this in my eyes, and she enjoys it in me. She delights in my shame. And then I thrill to see her delight. She feeds off my submission to her, her control and humiliation of me. I feed off of her joy in controlling me and in humiliating me. This is the intricate symbiosis, I think, of the dominant-slave relationship.

Ultimately, my humiliation of being is perhaps most realized in the name I am called most often: “slave Shae.” Shae, of course, is my real name, my birth name. And now Master has poached my middle name — “Maura” — for fellatio services. My true, full, real identity is redefined and attached to my slaveness.

This is who I am. My being. My humiliation.